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Some of you might be asking ‘What’s Mark Nevin got to do with folk music? Folk music should be traditional or nothing’. Others might say ‘No. Folk music should be expressing new ideas and challenging the establishment view’. And that, in microcosm, is the point of the title track of Mark’s new album, My Unfashionable Opinion, although unfashionable is perhaps a euphemism as anyone who has expressed a contentious point of view on Facebook or Twitter knows.

Mark Nevin is a fine songwriter who is unlikely to hit the charts any time soon, nor will he appear in your local folk club. He inhabits that twilight zone between commercial success and cult adoration. He is accompanied by a core band of Simon Edwards, Richard Marcangelo, Roger Beaujolais and James Hallawell with guests including a brass section.

He returns to the absurdities of the internet with ‘Forgotify’ and I tried to imagine what I’d feel if I heard it on acoustic guitar by a club floor singer. I know I’d hate it and that’s why Mark has to be where he is. ‘Don’t Be My Echo’ is essentially acoustic with some decoration but ‘Curly Wurly Boy’ – about both careers advice in schools and the drudgery of factory work – could be but isn’t. His songs about relationships: ‘Uncertainty’, ‘Cold War’ and ‘I Can Hear You’, for example, need the rock backing to avoid mawkishness but it’s the autobiographical pieces such as ‘Punching Above My Weight’ that I enjoy most.

If you would like to order a copy of the one of the albums (in CD or Vinyl), download them or just listen to snippets of selected tracks (track previews are usually on the download page) then click on the MARK NEVIN – My Unfashionable Opinion link to be taken to our associated partner Amazon’s website. Buying through Amazon on folking.com helps us to recover a small part of our running costs, so please order anything you need as every little purchase helps us.